


Im/Potent

by orphan_account



Category: Vertigo (1958)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, No Dialogue, Sexual Dysfunction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-03
Updated: 2017-08-03
Packaged: 2018-12-10 17:35:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11696556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Scottie has a problem only a dead woman can solve.  Until he meets Judy.





	Im/Potent

**Author's Note:**

> Based on an interview between François Truffaut and Alfred Hitchcock.
> 
> Scottie's attitude toward his sexual dysfunction and its being intertwined with manliness is meant to be period-typical and not a reflection of my personal views.

Until The Fall, as Scottie always thought of it; he hadn't fallen but a fellow officer had, to his death, Scottie had never had a problem with the ladies. He didn't exactly live in the freest and easiest era of history, but that didn't mean he wanted for opportunities. And there was always good old reliable Midge. They'd been a disaster a a couple, it was true, but there was friendship and occasionally a little bit more if they were, as Midge put it, between romantic gigs.

The Fall destroyed his libido. It wasn't the physical injury, although that was debilitating enough. Even after he was better, he still couldn't get interested. Not emotionally and, when by himself, not even physically. Midge even tried, but her would-be heroic efforts and cloying pity at his failure hardly helped. The doctors told him it was probably because of the psychological trauma he'd been through. Scottie thought that was codswallop. Everything was all about psychology these days. He went to two different urologists; those quacks both did distressingly thorough exams and told him there was nothing wrong with him.

The formerly (mostly) reliable lump of soft flesh between his legs begged to differ.

Then he met Madeleine. She gave him so much: renewed interest in life, a mystery and his own manhood restored by her passionate beauty, shifting endlessly between Madeleine and Carlotta in ways he knew he shouldn't find nearly as exciting as he did.

And then, when she had her own Fall, she gave him grief. Grief as he'd never known grief could exist. He'd barely noticed the harshness of the inquiry, barely registering whatever vaguely sympathetic things that were said to him afterward.

The verdict of suicide drove his grief over the edge to catatonia. Later, he was told that Midge visited him; he'd been vaguely aware of her presence but unable to respond. It would be over three years later, after another Fall, before he would even see her again.

He did get better. He was able to care for himself, talk to others, walk around his beloved San Francisco, although he largely avoided the parts that reminded him of Madeleine/Carlotta. When he first saw the woman who insisted she was Judy Barton of Salina, Kansas, something about her called to him. Practically screamed at him. He felt the first, faint hints of arousal since Madeleine/Carlotta's Fall. Despite her brown hair and vulgar shop girl look and mannerisms, he knew she had to be Madeleine/Carlotta. He knew he couldn't have possibly responded to anyone else, weak though his responses were.

He pursued her; she let him. She wanted him, he knew that. He also knew that he should want her back: she was attractive in her own way, she was street-smart in a way that had always appealed to him in women he'd known before Madeleine/Carlotta, but his dreams that always turned to nightmares (and the closest he got to full physical arousal) belonged to two women, neither of them Judy.

Eventually, he was able to persuade her to allow a team of beauticians to remake her in Madeleine's image and to accept the clothes he carefully picked out for her at I. Magnin. He knew he was blackmailing her with the promise of love and sex, but he also knew that her transformation was the only way they could both even come close to getting what they wanted.

She held out with one last stubborn refusal, keeping her hair down in her common shop girl's style, ridiculously claiming that the Madeleine/Carlotta chignon failed to suit her. Scottie knew that was a lie: with the colored hair and new make-up, she looked exactly like Madeleine/Carlotta and the hairstyle he had prescribed was exactly right for all three of them.

But all he had to say was, "Please, Judy." He watched the surrender and resignation cross her face and knew she'd comply. He allowed her the privacy of the bathroom to complete her transformation, waiting eagerly, feeling the life return between his legs as he waited for her to come out again, his anticipation tempered with anxiety. What if it didn't work? What if she defied him yet again? What if he was forever in thrall to Madeleine/Carlotta and not even the double could satisfy him?

She emerged as if in smoke: the neon from the sign outside, the fog of Scottie's own expectations. And it was her: Madeleine/Carlotta recreated from Judy, naked for him despite wearing Madeleine's clothes. He kissed her as he hadn't kissed anyone in over a year, as he had never kissed anyone but Madeleine/Carlotta, not even able to care that his mind hallucinated the stables around him. His impotence was gone, restored by Madeleine/Carlotta/Judy and finally he could satisfy all four of them.

He would've died happily in their arms, whole again at last.


End file.
